4of 5Psychic Victoria Alvarado reads fortune for people from her booth at the East End Street Fest on Saturday, Oct. 20, 2018, in Houston.Photo: Yi-Chin Lee, Houston Chronicle / Staff photographer

5of 5Psychic Victoria Alvarado reads fortune for people from her booth at the East End Street Fest on Saturday, Oct. 20, 2018, in Houston.Photo: Yi-Chin Lee, Houston Chronicle / Staff photographer

Victoria Alvarado gave up a full-time job as a health care coordinator to devote herself to what she says is her true talent: telling people about themselves and what they should expect in their lives.

Alvarado is a psychic, otherwise known as a soothsayer, fortune teller or oracle, and she has specific advice for people looking for the real thing: Don’t spill too much at the start of a session. If you do, it’s likely a psychic will tell you what you want to hear, rather than using his or her intuition.

“People are so distraught,” said Alvarado, 39. “they want to call you and they want to tell you everything that’s happening.”

Halloween is the peak season for psychics and while many people will roll their eyes, snicker and otherwise scoff at Alvarado’s profession, one prediction is a pretty sure bet: There’s some money to be made. Some psychics, according to Alvarado, charge as much as $2,000 to remove a hex. Alvarado, who is working to dispel the grifter image that haunts psychics, only charges $250 to $300 to lift a curse.

Alvarado, whose two great-grandmothers were indigenous faith healers in Mexico, said she knew at an early age she had particularly keen intuitive faculties. As a psychic, she says her job is not necessarily to divine people’s futures, but help them understand themselves. Alvarado said she has played confidante to NBA and NFL players, oil and gas executives, millionaire business owners, a state Senate candidate and, perhaps most colorfully, an R&B singer and his baby mama — none of whom she will name on the record.

A frequent client is the motivational speaker Amla Mehta of Connecticut. Mehta said she finds a spiritual adviser acts like a therapist.

Mehta, 44, who is legally blind, said Alvarado has been like a second sight for her. Mehta said Alvarado has connected her with her own ethereal energy and intuition, or her spiritual GPS, as she calls it.

Mehta said Alvarado helped her through the end of a romantic relationship. A vision Alvarado shared of Mehta completing a book inspired her to continue writing.

“I have to believe in myself, and when she saw that, it was like I could exhale for the first time,” Mehta said. “ I was like, OK. This has been a goal of mine, and it’s time to execute.”

Arthur Markman, a psychology professor at the University of Texas at Austin, sees some benefits for psychics’ clients. The psychics can imbue clients with the confidence needed to achieve their goals and assure them their efforts will be rewarded.

“People who repeatedly go to see psychics are deriving a psychological benefit,” he said.

Alvarado’s website offers multiple over-the-phone session options including a $120 one-hour psychic reading, a $275 one-hour business blessing and an $850 one-hour, 12-week life coaching package. Tarot readings start at two hours for $275 and go up to four hours for $650.

She said the Halloween season attracts those looking for fun, which quickly fills her calendar. A customer booked her services for Oct. 27 back in February to ensure her availability.

Many clients seek to connect with departed loved ones for the Day of the Dead celebrations, which begin Oct. 31 and end Nov. 2, and during Christmastime. As a new year starts, others want to clear their homes of negative energy.

Alvarado said she can intuitively see, hear and feel, and she can be a medium between the living and the dead. She tapped into these abilities free of charge for years, but it began to consume a lot of her energy and take away from her family responsibilities.

“Back then it was fun for me,” she said. Now “nobody gets it for free. I’m charging for my help.”

When she was employed at Harris Health System, she would work an eight-hour shift and then do medium consultations for another five. It was overwhelming. She quit her desk job, turning her night gig into her primary source of income

Though Alvarado has occasionally rented space at a suite off of Loop 610 and T.C. Jester Boulevard, she prefers phone consultations because they allow her to better control her environment. She began limiting in-person consultations when she said she noticed that after doing a spiritual cleansing or a home clearing that something would linger behind at her home or follow her.

“The windows would rattle, you would hear knocking on the wall and nobody was there, the lights would flicker on and off,” she said. “When the person would leave, yeah, they would be fine, but then I’m having to deal with it.”

A journalism graduate of Texas State University, Jose previously attended San Jacinto College where he served as the student newspaper editor. He completed two editorial internships in D.C., one of which was at RealClearPolitics, covering the U.S. Congress at both.
His other journo stints include freelancing for the Chronicle, doing the copy desk and some business reporting at the Victoria Advocate and interning at Community Impact Newspaper in San Marcos.
Born in Pasadena and mostly raised there, Jose as a kid moved a lot with his family. He has lived in all four contiguous time zones.